


It Made Him Happy

by aspermoth



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Cancer, Childhood, Comment Fic, Crossdressing, Gen, Introspection
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-01-31
Updated: 2012-01-31
Packaged: 2017-10-30 10:17:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,268
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/330645
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aspermoth/pseuds/aspermoth
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When John was nine years old, his mother got sick. He needed something to help him feel better. That was how it started.</p>
            </blockquote>





	It Made Him Happy

It all started when John was nine years old. When Mum got sick. When everybody crept around the house with grave faces and he and Harry were told to Be Very Quiet and Not Disturb Your Mummy and Everything Will Be Okay, which always meant that everything was not okay and might never be okay again.

Things were okay. Mum did get better. But it took a long time, a very long time, and John was only nine years old and he didn't know how things would turn out and he thought that Mum was going to die. And he was scared.

Dad was too busy looking after Mum to reassure a worried nine-year-old boy. Everybody else was too busy telling him to Be Quiet and Play Nicely With Harry. Harry was fourteen. She didn't want to play with her little brother. She wanted to hang around with her friends, to experiment with make-up and style their hair and giggle about boys.

So John did too.

Harry and her friends loved him. Adored him. He was their toy. Cute baby John, their little pampered pet, cosseted and coddled and dressed up to the nines. They made him one of them. They put him in dresses and daubed his face with make-up and styled his hair as much as they could and giggled incessantly all the while.

And it made him feel _better_.

He wasn't scared when he was with Harry and her friends. He could relax. He could forget about everything that worried him. He could just switch his mind off and be completely happy, bundled up in a nice dress and made-up all pretty with his short hair curled.

It made him feel _safe_.

But then Mum got better. They gave her the operations that pulled her apart and then put her back together again like Humpty Dumpty. They stopped giving her the medicine that made her sick and her hair fall out, that made her look as pale and fragile as egg shells. They made her better again, _human_ again. And they started to notice what John and Harry were doing.

Dad put a stop to it straight away. He didn't say much to John, but he took Harry into her bedroom and shouted at her so loudly that John put his hands over his ears and screwed his eyes shut to try to make it go away because Harry had just been trying to _help_ him, she hadn't been trying to turn him into a sissy or make him gay or screw him up, she _hadn't_.

She'd just been trying to help.

John didn't play with Harry any more after that. She started going out with her friends instead, hanging around with older boys and girls and bumming bottles of cheap shitty vodka off them. Now it was John trying to look after her, to cover up for her, to make sure that Mum and Dad didn't wake up when she rolled in at two in the morning with her tights torn, drunk as a newt. And at the same time, he didn't want to let Dad down and now he knew how much Dad expected from him, what Dad didn't want him to be, it was just so _hard_.

It was stressful. And all John could think about was how good it felt to dress like a girl, how much it made him feel better when Mum was sick, how much it helped him relax and escape and become one with himself again. He wanted it. He _needed_ it.

He bought his first girl clothes when he was twelve, sneaking into Tesco like a spy on a covert mission, mumbling something about his sister and his mum asking him to buy them at the check-out as he blushed a fierce red before running home and hiding his prize under the bed.

Whenever he felt bad, he'd shut his door. wedge his desk chair underneath the handle to keep it closed, and pull those hidden items out from under his bed. He'd strip down until he was standing in the middle of the carpet naked. Then he would pull out a single pair of knickers from the packaging – a single pair of pastel-coloured girls' knickers, pink or yellow or blue or green or purple – and gently slide them up his legs, the fabric insanely soft against his skin, until he was wearing those knickers and a wave of calm and peace would wash over him and he'd collapse on his bed with a sigh of relief.

God it felt good.

It wasn't sexual or anything. It wasn't a kink. It just helped him relax.

His collection grew as he got older. Different styles of knickers. Pairs of tights. A skirt or two. He bought make-up sets in the Christmas sales and stowed them under his bed so he could try them out, locking himself in the bathroom to make himself up again and again and again. Pretty soon he refused to let Mum clean his bedroom any more, terrified that she'd look under the bed and find his collection. Sometimes he'd throw things away, tell himself he wouldn't do this any more, but he always ended up re-buying what he'd purged and more.

Then John joined the army. Everything had to go.

Things were different when he came back to London, limping, homeless, alone. Everything seemed dulled. Muted. Turned down. It was as though the stop tap for his emotions had been turned tight shut, reducing the flow of feeling to a trickle. It was many things. It was the army environment. It was the things he'd seen. It was everything and nothing.

Then he met and moved in with Sherlock and the dam burst and everything came flooding back in as sharp as knives and razors and broken glass. At first, he tried to resist it. He didn't need it any more. It was a stupid thing he did when he was a kid, like Harry and drinking. He didn't need to do it any more. He didn't.

He soon started collecting again. Pairs of silk knickers. Stockings. Tights. Skirts. Dresses. Make-up. Padding. Even a wig. He hid them in his room, unsure if Sherlock knew anything about it. Sometimes, he was sure Sherlock had no idea. Sometimes, he was certain that Sherlock knew and was judging him for it, all the time judging. And sometimes, just sometimes, he was sure that Sherlock knew but didn't care.

None of it mattered when he was dressed up. When he shut himself in his bedroom, stripped himself down to nothing and built himself back up again from scratch. He'd shave first, his legs as well as his face, then he'd strap on the padding that turned his straight, hard, masculine figure soft and feminine and tuck his penis away where it couldn't be seen.

Then he'd dress himself up. Sometimes, he went for the most feminine look he could muster, frills and lace and ribbons galore; sometimes, he went for a vampish look, short skirts and high heels; and sometimes, he'd go for something basic and sweet, a moderate skirt and a nice top. He'd match his make-up to his clothes and paint his nails and style his wig.

And then, when all that was done, he would just look in the mirror at the person he'd become, look at himself feminised, and the sheer joy and contentment that swept through him would damn near knock him off his feet. It made him feel at peace. It made him feel at home.

It made him happy.


End file.
